How to win over prospective landlords

Many landlords have a full-time job or other commitments that leave them limited time and energy to fully invest in their residential rental property.

With that in mind, appointing a dedicated property manager to caretake and sweat their biggest asset should be a no-brainer.

Except nothing is ever that easy! Instead of trusting the experts, many landlords will often try to manage a complex array of laws, financial decisions, and admin tasks themselves.

For a property manager, the alarm bells are instant, loud, and clear. But how do you translate that in a way that speaks to landlords?

To properly showcase your hard-earned expertise and tireless daily efforts to prospective landlords, PayProp recommends you focus on the following key pain points of all landlords, following that up with an explanation of how you solve them like nobody else.

Tenant screening

A property manager's tenant screening process is almost certain to be more thorough than that of the average landlord.

Even if you both use the same service, you may have a higher-tiered plan that grants access to more data. And that means fewer high-risk tenants and lower stress levels for landlords, immediately. These are perks any landlord would want.

Describe your vetting process and emphasize your experience in spotting the red flags in a tenant’s history. Share references from current or past clients who can vouch for your ability to find reliable tenants – and to properly showcase them, consider building a professional website with a testimonial page.

Tenant management

Despite your best efforts, a problematic tenant might slip through the cracks every now and then – and on the flip side, keeping the good ones happy where they are will help you keep units filled and rent coming in.

Your customer service skills don’t only apply to landlords – they can be a really useful transferable skill to build positive tenant relations, which can lead to longer leases, reduced turnover, and more consistent payments.

Make sure your landlords know how you approach and how much time and effort you spend on addressing tenant concerns, resolving disputes, and conducting property inspections.

Most landlords looking for a property manager want as little involvement as possible, but their need for visibility will most likely be off the charts, so they should still be kept informed of all property-related matters at all times. Explain how you do this to give them maximum visibility – ideally in a non-intrusive way like a real-time landlord view showing the live payment status of their assets. Stress your strong use of different communication skills, average response times, communication events like invoicing and arrears chasing, and the success this has had.

Financial management

Speaking of rent and arrears, a steady cash flow is especially important to landlords (and to your percentage fee). They want assurance they will get their rent money on time and in full every month.

As an expert local property manager, you have a better understanding of market rents than they do, so you’re in a great position to help them maximize the return on their investments. Too much, and they’ll lose out. Too little, same thing. It has to be just right, it has to be you, and it can mean the difference between a guaranteed, optimized income, underselling themselves, or pricing themselves out of the market entirely.  

Show that they can count on you by detailing your rent collection and payment processes from start to finish, including expected payout days, any automated tools that improve their payout speed or service, and your business’s average arrears rate versus industry averages as evidence of your efficiency.

And on the subject of visibility, accurate, timely, and easy-to-understand financial reports will give landlords extra peace of mind about their property's performance, especially in tax season.

Maintenance

Landlords often find maintenance to be a major source of stress, as it requires them to be on call 24/7 – and even if they aren’t, tenants may still act as if they are.

Just by offering to take this burden off their hands – ideally with an intelligent system that ‘screens’ requests for urgency –  you could attract a number of potential clients eager to work with you.

As a property manager you are more likely to have a network of reliable contractors and vendors who can provide competitive pricing and quality work, so you’re in prime position to be the local go-to for everything from routine repairs to late-night emergencies and natural disaster preparedness.

And if you use PropTech providers like PayProp, you and your tenant and landlord get a convenient hub to organize and track all maintenance and repair tickets to their property – a far more streamlined situation than and landlord trying to manage without software.

Legal and regulatory compliance

Property management and rent-handling are subject to a confusing array of rules and regulations, which can be exhausting and confusing to amateur landlords. It’s vital to let them know they can trust you to ensure their rental properties always comply with local, state, and federal landlord-tenant and trust money laws.

Lay out your procedures for handling legal issues and evictions – should they arise – with samples of your company’s legally pristine lease agreements, notice letters, and other tenant-facing documents.

Superior value, equitable return

Property managers already recognize the value of their work, but prospective landlords may need more convincing.

When you understand – and have the metrics – to show how your service solves their issues, you'll have enough to reassure any hands-off landlord that their properties will receive excellent care under your management.